Research Brief
EDUC ATION
Do Title I School Choice and Supplemental Educational
Services Affect Student Achievement?
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F
or decades, parents, educators, and policymakers have sought ways to raise the
quality of education in U.S. schools. The
No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), passed
by the U.S. Congress in 2001, was intended to
ensure that all children in U.S. public schools
are proficient in reading and math by 2014. In
addition to creating greater school accountability, NCLB also creates new educational options
for parents whose children attend Title I schools
that are identified for improvement.1 Schools are
identified for improvement if they have not made
adequate yearly progress toward meeting state
standards for two or more years.
The first of these options is the opportunity
for parents to transfer a child to a school that has
not been identified for improvement. This option
is available if the child’s school is in year 1 or later
of identified-for-improvement status. The second
option is the opportunity for low-income parents
to enroll the child in supplemental educational
services—such as tutoring, remediation, or
other academic instruction—offered by a stateapproved provider, in addition to instruction
provided during the school day. This additional
option is available if the school is in year 2 or
beyond of identified-for-improvement status.
As part of a federally funded study of NCLB’s
effects, RAND researchers, in collaboration with
others, analyzed who chose to participate in each
educational option and how each option affected
student achievement in nine large, urban school
districts across the country.
They found that supplemental educational
services had a statistically significant positive
effect on student achievement in both reading
and math in most districts. They did not find
1
Title I schools operate programs funded under Title I of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA).
NCLB is the most recent reauthorization of ESEA.
Key findings:
• The students participating in supplemental
educational services generally improved their
performance in both reading and math.
• For students who took advantage of the
school choice option and moved to higherachieving schools, there was no observable
achievement gain as a result of changing
schools.
• Overall, those who took advantage of school
choice and supplemental services generally
came from the disadvantaged populations
that NCLB is intended to target.
an achievement effect associated with participation in Title I school choice, but the number of
participants in most districts was quite small,
suggesting the need for caution in interpreting
the absence of an observed effect. They also found
that users of these two options largely came from
the low-achieving or disadvantaged populations
that the options are intended to serve.
The Study Analyzed Student
Performance Over Time
To estimate the impact of educational options,
researchers took into account the fact that
students participating in school choice or supplemental educational services were likely to differ
from nonparticipants in terms of motivation
and other characteristics. The researchers controlled for these “unobservable” characteristics
by comparing students to themselves before and
after participation. Then, they compared the
achievement gains of these students to the gains
of all other students. In essence, the researchers
used the preparticipation achievement gains of
participating students as a control to evaluate the gains of the
same students while they were participating in school choice
or supplemental services.
students. First, students who participated in Title I supplemental educational services had lower achievement scores
than the eligible student population had. Students who
participated in Title I school choice had achievement scores
that were nearly identical to those of the eligible student
population. Also, elementary-grade students participated in
school choice and supplemental educational services at rates
about five times as high as those for high school students.
Among racial and ethnic groups, African-American students had the highest rates of participation in supplemental
services. Hispanic students had higher participation rates
than white students in supplemental educational services
but lower participation rates in school choice. Students
with limited English proficiency and those with disabilities had relatively high participation rates in supplemental
educational services and relatively low participation rates in
school choice. Overall, the users of these options generally
came from the disadvantaged populations that NCLB is
intended to target.
Students Participating in Supplemental
Educational Services Generally Improved in
Reading and Math
In five out of the seven districts in which there were sufficient
numbers of students to analyze the effects, the students participating in supplemental educational services showed statistically significant positive effects in both reading and math.
Moreover, for those students using supplemental services for
multiple years, the analysis suggests that the positive effect
might accumulate over time in many of these districts.
School Choice Did Not Produce Observable
Achievement Gains
NCLB allows students to transfer out of schools that are
failing to meet their state academic standards to schools that
are meeting those standards. Although small in number, the
students who took advantage of the school choice option generally moved to schools with higher levels of average achievement than the schools from which they came. However, in
the six districts in which the number of students was sufficient for statistical analysis, there was no observable achievement gain as a result of changing schools. This was true for
African-American students, Hispanic students, and students
with disabilities. However, it should be noted that the limited
number of students participating in the school choice option
may have constrained the ability to detect effects.
Conclusions
Title I supplemental educational services showed some
promise as a means of raising achievement among disadvantaged students and those most affected by underperforming
schools. Given that the operational characteristics—e.g.,
class sizes, teacher qualifications, hours of service, use of
technology—of supplemental educational service providers
vary widely, further research might help to identify the characteristics of providers that are particularly effective in raising
student achievement.
Meanwhile, the effects of NCLB-related school choice
remain in question. While this study did not find that
school choice had any effect, positive or negative, on student
achievement, it might be that participation rates are still too
low for effects to be identified. ■
Some Groups Took Advantage of Educational
Options More Than Others Did
In addition to examining achievement effects, researchers
explored participation rates among different groups of
This research brief describes work done for the U.S. Department of Education and documented in State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act:
Volume 1—Title I School Choice, Supplemental Educational Services, and Student Achievement, by Ron Zimmer, Brian Gill, Paula Razquin, Kevin Booker, J. R. Lockwood, Georges Vernez, Beatrice Birman, Michael Garet, and Jennifer O’Day (available at http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/choice/implementation/), 2007, 62 pp.,
also available as RP-1265 (http://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/RP1265/). The work was performed in RAND Education, a unit of the RAND Corporation. The RAND
Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors
around the world. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. R® is a registered trademark.
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RB-9273 (2007)
THE ARTS
CHILD POLICY
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CIVIL JUSTICE
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This product is part of the RAND Corporation
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policy-oriented summaries of individual published, peerreviewed documents or of a body of published work.
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